Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, November 1997. It can also be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, November 1998. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 4 (1999), edited by David G. Hartwell, Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF (2009), edited by Mike Ashley. The story is included in the collections Worlds Vast and Various (2000) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1977. There are no other known publications of the novella but it was later incorporated in the fix-up novel In the Ocean of Night (1977).

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 1995. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell, and The Space Opera Renaissance (2006), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection Worlds Vast and Various: Stories (2000).

This short story originally appeared in Amazing Stories, March 1989. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The 1990 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha.

Craftsman and amateur astronomer Geoffrey Carlisle from Ely discovers that the moon is fractionally ahead of its usual elliptical orbit. He is becomes instantaneously well-known for his unique observation. Using Carlisle's findings, astronomy experts discover that each star circling the moon has been slightly warped. Yet after some time, as Professor Wright from Cambridge University had predicted, the warped stars return to their rightful places, suggesting that the world is an information-ordered one, like an analogue program acting out. What then, are the actual repercussions of a computational error in reality?

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction (2001), edited by Al Sarrantonio. It can also be found in the anthologies Science Fiction: The Best of 2001, edited by Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg, Year's Best SF 7 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction (2006), edited by Mike Ashley.

This short story originally appeared in Nature, March 2, 2006. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Read the full story for free at Nature.

A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3500-year-old Mycenaean tomb. An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose and its origins are unknown. Its discovery has unleashed a storm of intrigue, theft and espionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war. Its substance has scientists baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth. It is mystery and madness - an enigma with no equal in recorded history. It is mankind's greatest discovery ...and worst nightmare. It may already have obliterated a world. Ours is next.

Life might emerge under the most unlikely conditions... or in the last extremity.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This novelette originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, June 2006. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best of Jim Baen's Universe (2007), edited by Eric Flint. The story is included in the collection The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Within an installation of ultra-high-energy scientific equipment, something goes wrong with a young physicist's ambitious experiment. It will soon be seen as a significant historical breakthrough, for the explosion has left something behind - a sphere made of nothing known to science.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Alien Crimes (2007), edited by Mike Resnick. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeaed in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1969. The story can also be found in the anthology Sociology Through Science Fiction (1974) edited by Patricia Warrick, Joseph D. Olander, Martin H. Greenberg and John W. Milstead. It was later expanded to the full novel Deeper Than the Darkness (1970).

Regein was the first human colony struck by the Quarn - aliens never seen by man, yet who sow a strange death through man's crumbling empire. In humanity's wreckage, Ling Sanjen, a rare half-breed Caucasian, sets forth to find what - and who - has broken the spirit of mankind...

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, April 1975. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #5 (1976), edited by Terry Carr, The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, Light Years and Dark: Science Fiction and Fantasy Of and For Our Time (1984), edited by Michael Bishop and Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf.The story is included in the collections In Alien Flesh (1986) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Impending personal tragedy is dimming the brilliant light of Dr. Benjamin Knowlton's world. On the threshold of their greatest achievement, the renowned astrophysicist's beloved wife and partner -- ex-astronaut-turned astronomer -- is dying.

But something looms alarningly on the far edge of the solar system: at once a scientific find of unparalleled importance that could ensure the Knowltons' immortality, and a potential earth-shattering cataclysm that dwarfs their private one. For Benjamin and Channing have discovered "Eater," an eons-old black hole anomaly that devours stars and worlds. Yet its most awesome and devasting secrets are still to be revealed...and feared.

Gregory Benford, one the great SF writers of our day, has assumed the mantle of editor to produce an ambitous hard SF anthology: Far Futures. Many of the fields's greatest works concern vast perspectives, expanding our visions of ourselves by foreseeing the immense panorama of time. This anthology collects five orignal novellas that take the very long view, all set at least ten thousand years in the future. The authors take a rigorously scientific view of such grand panoramas, confronting the largest issues of cosmology, astronomy, evolution, and biology.

Genesis by Poul Anderson is set a billion years ahead, when humanity has become extinct. Earth is threatened by the slowly warming sun. Vast machine intelligences decide to recreate humans.

In At the Eschaton by Charles Sheffield, a man tries to rescue his dying wife from oblivion by hurling himself forward, in both space and time, to the very end of the universe itself.

Joe Haldeman's For White Hill confronts humanity with hostile aliens who remorselessly grind down every defense against them. A lone artist struggles to find a place in this distant, wondrous future, where humanity seems doomed.

The last moments of a universe beseiged occupy Greg Bear's Judgment Engine. Can something human matter at the very end of creation, as contorted matter ceases to have meaning and time itself stutters to an eerie halt?

Donald Kingsbury contributes Historical Crisis, a starting work on the prediction of the human future that challenges the foundations of psychohistory, as developed in Isaac Asimov's famous Foundation Trilogy.

Far Futures is required reading for the core audience of hard SF devotees. It may be the best book they read all year.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Looking Long - essay by Gregory Benford
• Judgment Engine - (1995) - novelette by Greg Bear
• Genesis - (1995) - novella by Poul Anderson
• Historical Crisis - (1995) - novella by Donald Kingsbury
• For White Hill - (1995) - novella by Joe Haldeman
• At the Eschaton - (1995) - novella by Charles Sheffield

When we encountered the aliens, we thought we knew the story they were telling. But we were looking at the wrong end...

Anthologized in The Best of Gregory Benford.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.

Eleven well-known British writersM. Kornbluth, Hilary Bailey, Greg Bear, Keith Roberts, David Brin, Brad Linaweaver, Sheila Finch, Algis Budrys, Howard Goldsmith, Tom Shippey and Gregory Benfordcontribute tales that delineate a theme: even if the Nazis had won World War II, it would have been a hollow victory. The Germans portrayed here are as gray as the field-grade uniform. The settings range from a psychedelic trip by an American physicist in Los Alamos to a house haunted by the fetuses of murdered Jewish mothers to excerpts from Joseph Goebbels' postwar diaries. The volume has a seminal flaw, however. No matter how powerful the fiction or symbolic the myth, neither is as compelling as what actually happened during the years of the Third Reich. - Publishers Weekly

Table of Contents:

• Preface: Imagining the Abyss - (1986) - essay by Gregory Benford
• Introduction: Hitler Victorious - (1986) - essay by Norman Spinrad
• Two Dooms - (1958) - novella by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Fall of Frenchy Steiner - (1964) - novelette by Hilary Bailey
• Through Road No Whither - (1985) - shortstory by Greg Bear
• Weihnachtsabend - (1972) - novelette by Keith Roberts
• Thor Meets Captain America - (1986) - novelette by David Brin
• Moon of Ice - (1982) - novella by Brad Linaweaver
• Reichs-Peace - (1986) - novelette by Sheila Finch
• Never Meet Again - (1958) - shortstory by Algis Budrys
• Do Ye Hear the Children Weeping? - (1986) - shortstory by Howard Goldsmith
• Enemy Transmissions - (1986) - shortstory by Tom Shippey
• Valhalla - (1982) - shortstory by Gregory Benford

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, March 1996. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It is included in the collection Immersion and Other Short Novels (2002).

The author of such hard-science masterpieces as Eater, Benford excels at short fiction as well, from a tale of courage in the aftermath of nuclear war ("To the Storming Gulf") to a thoughtful commentary on human and primate interaction in his title novella.

Table of Contents:

• To the Storming Gulf - (1985) - novella
• Of Space/Time and the River - (1985) - novelette
• Matter's End - (1991) - novelette
• Immersion - (1996) - novella

A man is hired to assist in the dangerous task of communicating with giant pelagic aliens, who can only be contacted by directly connecting with their nervous system from inside their bodies.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1978. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1979 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Eighth Annual Collection (1979), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections In Alien Flesh (1986) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Author of the Nebula Award winning Timescape, Benford's first collection of short stories demonstrates the extraordinary range of his imagination. The stories contained within are a perfect introduction to the work of one of our greatest SF novelists and thinkers.

Table of Contents:

• Blood on Glass - (1986) - poem
• In Alien Flesh - (1978) - novelette
• Time Shards - (1979) - shortstory
• Redeemer - (1979) - shortstory
• Snatching the Bot - (1977) - shortfiction
• Relativistic Effects - (1982) - novelette
• Nooncoming - (1978) - shortstory
• To the Storming Gulf - (1985) - novella
• White Creatures - (1975) - shortstory
• Me/Days - (1984) - shortstory
• Of Space/Time and the River - (1985) - novelette
• Exposures - (1981) - shortstory
• Time's Rub - (1984) - shortstory
• Doing Lennon - (1975) - shortstory
• Afterword (In Alien Flesh) - (1986) - essay

Sturgeon Award nominated novella. It appeared in the anthology Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction (2014), edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, December 2013.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It appeared in the anthology Full Spectrum 3 (1991), edited by Lou Aronica, Amy Stout and Betsy Mitchell. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection (1992), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 28 (1994), edited by James Morrow, and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection Matter's End (1995), Immersion and Other Short Novels (2002) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Contents:

• Freezeframe - (1986) - shortstory
• Mozart on Morphine - (1989) - shortstory
• Centigrade 233 - (1990) - shortstory
• Sleepstory - novelette
• Calibrations and Exercises - (1979) - shortstory
• Leviathan - (1989) - shortstory
• Shakers of the Earth - (1992) - shortstory
• Proselytes - (1988) - shortstory
• Touches - (1991) - shortstory
• Nobody Lives on Burton Street - (1970) - shortstory
• Dark Sanctuary - (1979) - shortstory
• Side Effect - shortstory
• Knowing Her - (1977) - shortstory
• Stand-In - (1965) - shortstory
• Time Guide - (1979) - shortstory
• We Could Do Worse - (1988) - shortstory
• Slices - (1981) - shortstory
• Immortal Night - (1985) - shortstory
• The Bigger One - (1994) - shortstory
• Cadenza - (1981) - shortstory
• Matter's End - (1989) - novella
• Afterword - essay

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Engineering Infinity (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 17 (2012), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Award-winning author and scientist Gregory Benford has collected all-new, hard-science stories about miniature universes of every imaginable kind. These 13 stories will open portals into unforgettable universes that exist within or outside our own.

With stories by Stephen Baxter, Paul Levinson, Pamela Sargent, Robert J. Sawyer, Robert Sheckley, George Zebrowski, and other masters.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Gregory Benford
• Act of God - shortstory by Jack McDevitt
• The We Who Sing - (2002) - shortstory by Stephen Baxter
• Venus Flowers at Night - novella by Pamela Sargent
• Kata Bindu - shortstory by Robert J. Sawyer
• Palace Resolution - novelette by Tom Purdom
• Ouroboros - (1997) - shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis
• The Name of the Beast Was Number - novelette by Russell Blackford
• Once Out of Nature - shortstory by Howard V. Hendrix
• Dream Walking - novelette by Jamil Nasir
• A Spirit of Place - novelette by Robert Sheckley
• My First World - novelette by George Zebrowski
• Critical View - (1999) - shortstory by Paul Levinson
• A Moment of Your Time - shortstory by Mike Resnick and Dean Wesley Smith

In a major science fiction event, Nebula Award winners Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nancy Kress, and Frederik Pohl join forces--under the editorship of Robert Silverberg--to create a triumph of world-building: Murasaki, a science fiction novel in six parts. Murasaki is completely based in hard science and what we know of the Murasaki star system--which actually exists.

Authors Poul Anderson and Frederik Pohl painstakingly constructed the working mechanics of a real star system, projecting the atmosphere, geology, chemistry, flora, and fauna of the two planets on which the work is set. They and four more of America's best science fiction authors--known for their "hard" speculative fiction--used Pohl and Anderson's essays (included as appendixes to this book) as source material to create this amazing story of the earliest human explorations of the twenty-third century--an epic tale of discovery, conflict, and resolution told by the masters of imaginative writing.

Murasaki, star HD 36395... where the gristmill of Darwinism produced two vastly different alien ecologies on two closely revolving planets, circling each other since scouring lightning storms stirred them to life billions of years ago. The two planets are Genji, violent and reckless, filled with a variety of winged life; and Chujo, a cooling world of ancient, crumbling cities, slowly going through its glacial death throes. Both planets are host to intelligences that are strange in ways Man can only guess at...and the planets have an eerie connection that will soon come to fruition after the first human explorers arrive. Exceeding light-speed for twenty years and decelerating by plasma exhaust drive, the first ship bearing humans arrives at Murasaki. The wealth, pride, and future of nations depend upon the outcome as the first contact team sets foot on a Murasaki-system world--while the hope of mankind, a planet capable of supporting human life, awaits the first explorer to touch the strangely colored alien soil....

Contains:

• Introduction (Murasaki) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• The Treasures of Chujo - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• Genji - novelette by David Brin
• Language - novelette by Poul Anderson
• World Vast, World Various - novella by Gregory Benford
• A Plague of Conscience - novelette by Greg Bear
• Birthing Pool - novelette by Nancy Kress
• Appendix A: Design for Two Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Poul Anderson
• Appendix B: Murasaki's Worlds (Murasaki) - essay by Frederik Pohl

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1986. The story can aslo be found in the anthologies Heroes in Hell (1986) edited by Janet Morris and Nebula Awards 22 (1988), edited by George Zebrowski.

This novelette originally appeared in Oceans of the Mind, Winter 2004. It can also be found in the anthologies Gateways (2005), edited by Martin H. Greenberg, and Year's Best SF 11 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

This short story originally appeared in Nature, June 10, 2010. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Read the full story for free at Nature.

This short story originally appeared in Nature Physics, December 2007. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 13 (2008), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Read the full story for free at Nature.

In this thematic sequel to Gregory Benford's award-winning bestseller Timescape, a history professor finds that he is able travel back to 1968, the year he was sixteen--here, he finds a slew of mentors with the same ability, including Robert Heinlein, Albert Einstein, and Philip K. Dick and becomes a successful Hollywood screenwriter until some wicked time travelers try to subvert him.

This novelette origianally appeared in the anthology Extrasolar (2017), edited by Nick Gevers. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

Shadows of Eternity is a novel set two centuries from now. Humanity has established a SETI library on the moon to decipher and interpret the many messages from alien societies we have discovered. The most intriguing messages are from complete artificial intelligences.

Ruth, a beginner Librarian, must talk to alien minds--who have aggressive agendas of their own. She opens doors into strangeness beyond imagination--and in her quest for understanding nearly gets killed doing it.

The first strikes destroyed Cleveland, Tunis, and parts of Alaska, Canada, and Australia. That was barely the beginning.

The swarm -- a cloud of meteors and asteroids 50,000 miles across -- was coming. Hundred of missiles put Earth under siege forcing the world in a panicked hell of anarchy and catastrophe. Riots and orgies rampaged in the rubble. And worse waited.

Because at the swarm's heart was Shiva -- a 30 billion-ton comet set to hit earth with the force of 250,000 H-bombs. The impact would turn seas into vapor and mountains into dust. Pray, scream, get drunk, or run amok -- but no one could escape it. No one could survive it.

And no one could stop it.

Respected science fiction author-editors Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski present an anthology, with unique color illustrations, that is filled with the excitement, poetry, and adventure awaiting us in the limitless final frontier that is the sky. For years, science fiction has portrayed humankind growing away from the cradle of Earth through spacecraft, space stations, and space homes. Skylife features stories by such masters of science fiction as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven, Joan Vinge, and James Blish-in addition to several essays by scientists-all of which come together in one spectacular volume to provide a picture of our possible future beyond Earth.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: We All Live in the Sky - essay by George Zebrowski and Gregory Benford
• The End of the Beginning - (1956) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• Bigger Than Worlds - (1974) - essay by Larry Niven
• Special Delivery - (1957) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• Feathered Friend - (1957) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• Take a Deep Breath - (1957) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• Freedom of Space - (1957) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• Passer By - (1957) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Call of the Stars - (1957) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• Tank Farm - novelette by David Brin
• Breakaway, Backdown - (1996) - shortstory by James Patrick Kelly
• The Wind from a Burning Woman - (1978) - novelette by Greg Bear
• View from a Height - (1978) - shortstory by Joan D. Vinge
• The Voyage That Lasted Six Hundred Years - (1940) - novelette by Don Wilcox
• Redeemer - (1979) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Bindlestiff - (1950) - novelette by James Blish
• Open Loops - novelette by Stephen Baxter
• Spomelife: The Universe and the Future - (1965) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Reef - novelette by Paul J. McAuley
• A Dream of Time - shortstory by George Zebrowski
• Space Stations and Space Habitats: A Selective Bibliography - essay by Gary Westfahl
• About the Authors - essay by George Zebrowski
• About the Artists - essay by George Zebrowski
• About the Editors - essay by George Zebrowski
• Permissions Acknowledgments - essay by George Zebrowski

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1994. There are no other known publications available at this time.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Science Fiction Digest, October-November 1981. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #11 (1982), edited by Terry Carr and The Mammoth Book of Modern Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1980s (1993) edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Isaac Asimov and Charles G. Waugh.

New York Times bestselling author Gregory Benford creates an alternate history about the creation of the atomic bomb that explores what could have happened if the bomb was ready to be used by June 6, 1944.

Karl Cohen, a chemist and mathematician who is part of The Manhattan Project team, has discovered an alternate solution for creating the uranium isotope needed to cause a chain reaction: U-235.

After convincing General Groves of his new method, Cohen and his team of scientists work at Oak Ridge preparing to have a nuclear bomb ready to drop by the summer of 1944 in an effort to stop the war on the western front. What ensues is an altered account of World War II in this taut thriller.

Combining fascinating science with intimate and true accounts of several members of The Manhattan Project, The Berlin Project is an astounding novel that reimagines history and what could have happened if the atom bomb was ready in time to stop Hitler from killing millions of people.

This is a monumental collection of thirty-eight Gregory Benford stories, including some of the best science fiction of the last fifty years, chosen from the more than two hundred he has published to date:

At the end of the 1960s, Benford expanded his novella "Deeper than the Darkness," to become his first novel of the same title in 1970. He hit his stride in the 1970s, making his reputation with stories such as "Doing Lennon" and "In Alien Flesh." By the end of that decade he had written In the Ocean of Night, the first of his impressive Galactic Center novels. He entered the 1980s a Nebula Award-winner for his classic novel, Timescape. That decade continued with the impressive stories "Relativistic Effects" and "Exposures," the novel, Against Infinity, and ended with "Matters End" and "Mozart on Morphine."

By the middle of the 1980s he had also taken the leadership position of spokesman for hard science fiction, and contended with the rising cyberpunk reformers of hard SF. He has remained the most articulate defender of science's role in science fiction to this day, and perhaps the most literate and literary of its writers. In the 1990s, by now an acknowledged master of hard science fiction, he became more playful in some works, in particular stories such as "Centigrade 233," a riff on Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451, and "Zoomers," a dot-com bubble superman fantasia, while still holding to the center with the majority of his writing, completing his long series of Galactic Center novels and even writing in Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe.

That playful thread became central after the turn of the millennium, with shorter satirical pieces originally published in Nature, such as "Applied Mathematical Theology" and "Reasons Not to Publish." But he still wrote the innovative stories "Bow Shock," "Mercies," and "The Sigma Structure Symphony" and in the second decade of the new century embarked on a major collaboration with Larry Niven, in the novels The Bowl of Heaven and Shipstar.

We have here a series of snapshots of a moving target, a writer who has been growing and changing for decades, extending his art, and the art of science fiction writing. Benford continues building himself challenging structures to write in with two story series in progress that may emerge as major works. He's not slowing down. But for the record we now have this book, a permanent chronicle of a major career. Six decades so far.

Table of Contents

• Nobody Lives on Burton Street - (1970)
• Doing Lennon - (1975)
• White Creatures - (1975)
• In Alien Flesh - (1978)
• Redeemer - (1979)
• Dark Sanctuary - (1979)
• Time Shards - (1979)
• Exposures - (1981)
• Relativistic Effects - (1982)
• Of Space/Time and the River - (1985)
• Time's Rub - (1985)
• Freezeframe - (1986)
• Proselytes - (1988)
• Matter's End - (1989)
• Mozart on Morphine - (1989)
• Centigrade 233 - (1990)
• World Vast, World Various - (1992)
• In the Dark Backward - (1993)
• A Desperate Calculus - (1995)
• Zoomers - (1996)
• The Voice - (1997)
• Slow Symphonies of Mass and Time - (1998)
• A Dance to Strange Musics - (1998)
• Anomalies - (2001)
• Comes The Evolution - (2001)
• Twenty-Two Centimeters - (2004)
• A Life with a Semisent - (2005)
• Applied Mathematical Theology - (2006)
• Bow Shock - (2006)
• Reasons Not to Publish - (2007)
• The Champagne Award - (2008)
• Penumbra - (2010)
• Gravity's Whispers - (2010)
• Mercies - (2011)
• Grace Immaculate - (2011)
• Eagle - (2011)
• The Sigma Structure Symphony - (2012)
• Backscatter - (2013)
• Afterword

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2002, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #102 March 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection (2003), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Eagle Has Landed: 50 Years of Lunar Science Fiction (2019), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Once upon a moment, the One spoke to He and She, and learned that infinity and eternity are slippery concepts. At best.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared on Sci Fiction, May 19, 2004. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 10 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

This short story originally appeared in French translation in the anthology Destination 3001 (2000), edited by Jacques Chambon and Robert Silverberg. It was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2003. The story can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 9 (2004), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and A.I.s (2004), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann.

The first novel by New York Times bestselling author Gregory Benford, "The Stars in Shroud" original story was a Hugo and Nebula nominee.

The alien Quarn strike suddenly at the heart of Earth's interstellar Empire. Their weapon is a deadly plague--a soul-twisting assault that strips away the veneer of civilization. The psychological illness sends its victims fleeing back a million years to the safety of the ancestral caves.

No one knew how the Quarn spread the plague. No one knew why they wanted to destroy humanity.

But Captain Ling Sanjen had thought of a way to stop them...

This short story originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, May 1997. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 3 (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collections Worlds Vast and Various: Stories (2000) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Universe 9 (1979), edited by Terry Carr, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2015. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year #9 (1980), edited by Terry Carr. The story is included in the collections In Alien Flesh (1986) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

1962: A young Californian scientist finds his experiments spoiled by mysterious interference. Gradually his suspicions lead him to a shattering truth: scientists from the end of the century are using subatomic particles to send a message into the past, in the hope that history can be changed and a world-threatening catastrophe averted.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January-February 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology New Dimensions Science Fiction Number 5 (1975), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story can also be found in the collecitons In Alien Flesh (1986) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

A time-traveller on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny...

As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to scientific team races to salvage a livable future...

On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist's work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation...

An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career, finds a remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fields and fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun...

Table of Contents:

• A Calculus of Desperation - (1995) - novelette
• Doing Alien - (1994) - short story
• In the Dark Backward - (1993) - short story
• The Voice - (1997) - short story
• Kollapse - (1995) - short story
• As Big as the Ritz (revised) - (1987) - novella
• The Scarred Man - (1970) - short story
• World Vast, World Various - (1992) - novella
• Zoomers - (1996) - short story
• High Abyss - (1995) - short story
• A Worm in the Well - (1995) - novelette
• A Dance to Strange Musics - (1998) - novelette
• Afterthoughts - (2000) - essay

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Future Net (1996), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 2 (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collections Worlds Vast and Various: Stories (2000) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

From the Nebula Award-winning author of "Timescape" and "Foundation's Fear" comes a hard-science thriller about the race to Mars that will tie into NASA's upcoming landing on the planet.

The first manned mission to Mars has been a resounding success, and excitement grows as more new discoveries are made. However, one discovery continues to defy rational explanation - the 'marsmat' - a complex anaerobic life-form found in the planet's honeycomb of tunnels. This raises questions about the nature and meaning of life itself which will lead the curious and the driven to Pluto and beyond, to the cold void at the fringes of the solar system.

In this first collaboration by science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape), the limits of wonder are redrawn once again as a human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure half-englobing a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths...and it's on a direct path heading for the same system as the human ship.

A landing party is sent to investigate the Bowl, but when the explorers are separated--one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape--the mystery of the Bowl's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that will transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

Science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape) continue the thrilling adventure of a human expedition to another star system that is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure cupping a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths. And which, tantalizingly, is on a direct path heading toward the same system the human ship is to colonize.

Investigating the Bowl, or Shipstar, the human explorers are separated--one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape--while the mystery of the Shipstar's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

Audacious astronauts encounter bizarre, sometimes deadly life forms, and strange, exotic, cosmic phenomena, including miniature black holes, dense fields of interstellar plasma, powerful gravity-emitters, and spectacularly massive space-based, alien-built labyrinths. Tasked with exploring this brave, new, highly dangerous world, they must also deal with their own personal triumphs and conflicts.

A collaboration of two science fiction greats, Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund, the original "If The Stars Are Gods" was quite well received when it appeared in the spring of 1974 in the hardcover Random House anthology Universe Four. It went on to win a Nebula Award in 1975. A few critics found the central protagonist, Bradley Reynolds, to be a bit over the top -- but then, who among us would invite Captain Ahab over for dinner, drinks and a video afterward?

In this expanded novel length version of If The Stars Are Gods, which appeared in 1976, the rest of the life of Bradley Reynolds fell into place -- meeting strange aliens, forging out into the realms of the solar system, always questing. This 2013 edition includes a new introduction by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund -- the story of how their two science fiction writing careers grew out of this work, If The Stars Are Gods.

Nebula Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in the Universe 4 (1974), edited by Terry Carr. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4 (1975), edited by Terry Carr, Nebula Award Stories Ten (1975), edited by James Gunn, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IV (1986), edited by Terry Carr and The Science Fiction Century (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell.

The story was later expanded to the full novel If the Stars are Gods (1977).

The Jovian Astronautical-Biological Orbital Laboratory circles Jupiter and its moons--a metal shell bathed in lethal radiation, held in tenuous place by the gravity of the massive gas giant like a fragile glass ornament in a monstrous fist.

For seventeen-year-old Matt Bohles and his friends, "the Can" is home.

Life onboard the aging space station is cramped, spartan, and dangerous. Its mission--to monitor incoming signals and transmissions in search of alien life--has so far proven fruitless.

It is the only world Matt has ever known.

But now, as the threshold of adulthood--with its onset of new questions, confusions and feelings --Matt Bohles faces an impending crisis that threatens everything he knows and is. For unless he can prove himself an invaluable member of the scientific team--and quickly--he will be exiled to a filthy, perilous and unfamiliar hell called Earth.

On the poisonous, icy surface of Ganymede, a man and a boy are on a hunt for the Aleph--an alien artifact that ruled Ganymede for countless millenia, Infinitely dangerous, the Aleph haunts men's dreams and destroys all efforts to terraform Ganymede into an habitable planet. Now an ancient struggle is joined, as a boy seeks manhood, a man seeks enlightenment, and a society seeks the power to rule the universe.

At the heart of Known Space lies mystery: How did so anarchic and violent a species as the Kzin ever learn to cooperate sufficiently to develop the technology to conquer an interstellar empire? The answer to this and other questions have been hinted at before, but now Gregory Benford, a renowned high-energy physicist, and molecular biologist Mark O. Martin bring their formidable talents and extraordinarily broad range of expertise to bear on all the mysteries of Known Space.

The best SF writers of the year represented once again in volume 34 of the Nebula Awards collection series, edited this year by a beloved, bestselling SF writer.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Science Fictional Century - (2000) - essay by Gregory Benford
• Reading the Bones - (1998) - novella by Sheila Finch
• Lost Girls - (1997) - novelette by Jane Yolen
• Thirteen Ways to Water - (1998) - shortstory by Bruce Holland Rogers
• Forever Peace (excerpt) - (1997) - shortfiction by Joe Haldeman
• Genre and Genesis: A Discussion of Science Fiction's Literary Role - (2000) - essay by Gregory Benford
• Why Can't We All Just Live Together?: A Vision of Genre Paradise Lost - (1998) - essay by Jonathan Lethem
• Respectability - (1998) - essay by Gordon Van Gelder
• Gatekeepers and Literary Bigots - (2000) - essay by George Zebrowski
• Good News about SF in Bad Publishing Times; or, Growth, Change, and the Preservation of Quality in the Literature of Genre - (2000) - essay by David G. Hartwell
• The Truth About Sci-Fi Movies, Revealed at Last - (2000) - essay by Bill Warren
• Winter Fire - (1997) - shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis
• Lethe - (1997) - novelette by Walter Jon Williams
• The Mercy Gate - (1998) - novelette by Mark J. McGarry
• The 1998 Author Emeritus: William Tenn - (2000) - essay by George Zebrowski
• My Life and Hard Times in SF - (2000) - essay by William Tenn
• The Grand Master Award: Hal Clement - (2000) - essay by Poul Anderson
• Uncommon Sense - (1946) - shortstory by Hal Clement
• Explaining Frankenstein to His Mother - (1997) - poem by John Grey
• why goldfish shouldn't use power tools - (1997) - poem by Laurel Winter

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the high-water marks of science fiction. It is the monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline, and the secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the inevitable Dark Age with the science of psychohistory. Now, with the permission -- and blessing -- of the Asimov estate, the epic saga continues.

Fate -- and a cruel Emperor's arbitrary power -- have thrust Hari Seldon into the First Ministership of the Empire against his will. As the story opens, Hari is about to leave his quiet professorship and take on the all but impossible task of administering 25 million inhabited worlds from the all-steel planet of Trantor. With the help of his beautiful bio-engineered "wife" Dors and his alien companion Yugo, Seldon is still developing the science that will transform history, never dreaming that it will ultimately pit him against future history's most awesome threat.

Hundreds of years after the events in Against the Fall of Night, Alvin and Seranis are working to repopulate the Earth with original species resurrected from a library of ancient genetic information. Among these resurrected beings is Cley, a Cro-Magnon and sole survivor of her tribe. Cley joins forces with Alvin and a large, intelligent rodent named Seeker to eliminate the threat from the Mad Mind once and for all-and clear the way for life in the Solar System to thrive.

Set more than a billion years from now, the novel begins with a young woman who yearns to escape the rigid, timeless Earth she knows. So she flees, in the company of an intelligent beast wise beyond recognition. But there are mysterious forces afoot among the planets that she never foresaw. Alien agencies have learned to span parallel universes, ones that lie only a millimeter away but are invisible to any device known to man. Soon these beings confront the travelers and a struggle beyond imagining begins...

This is a re-write of Benford's novel Beyond the Fall of Night (1990), a sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night.

Set in a world of lunar colonies, cybernetic miracles, fanatic cults, deadly pollution and famine, the first story in the Galactic Center Series. This world of social decay is facing hardship, but not far beyond the shores of space comes a mystery, which one man, astronaut Nigel Walmsley is about to touch.

Lancer, a spaceship built to specifications found in the computers of an alien derelict, journeys to the star, Ra, from which the Earth has received mysterious radio transmissions in English.

At the center of the galaxy, a small band of humans, trapped on the barren world of Snowglade and facing extinction, discovers that they will play a new role in the order of the universe.

The sequel to "Great Sky River", this book continues the author's chronicle of life at the galaxy's centre, many centuries in the future. A band of humans flee aboard a regenerated starship to another planet where the mechs are in retreat but an even greater threat of alien cyborgs exists.

The passengers on the spaceship Argo, pursued by hostile ""mechs,"" must face their doubts about their captain's obsession with finding the galaxy's True Center, an obsession that even troubles the captain's son.

The slaughter has begun. The mechs -- violent artificial intelligences dedicated to the total destruction of the human race -- have ravaged humanity's planets throughout the galaxy, forcing the survivors to flee to the Esty, a strange space-time continuum constructed by ancient beings near the galaxy's True Center.

In the Esty, the battered human race makes its final stand against the relentless mechs. It soon becomes hideously clear that young warrior Toby Bishop, his father Killeen, and his grandfather have become special targets that the mechs' terrifying design involves their capture, torture, and extinction.

This volume contains all the Hugo award winning short fiction for the award years 1992 to 1994.

Table of Contents:

• A Walk in the Sun - (1991) - shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis
• Gold - (1991) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• Beggars in Spain - (1991) - novella by Nancy Kress
• Even the Queen - (1992) - shortstory by Connie Willis
• The Nutcracker Coup - (1992) - novelette by Janet Kagan
• Barnacle Bill the Spacer - (1992) - novella by Lucius Shepard
• Death on the Nile - (1993) - novelette by Connie Willis
• Georgia on My Mind - (1993) - novelette by Charles Sheffield
• Down in the Bottomlands - (1993) - novella by Harry Turtledove

One of five stories inspired by the same painting by John Jude Palencar. Anthologized in The Palencar Project and later in The Year's Best SF 18 (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell, and Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore (2017), edited by Paula Guran. The story is included in the collection The Best of Gregory Benford.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

The Saturn Game:

Imaginative roleplaying provides relief for some of the crew on the long, dull trip to Saturn. However their imaginary world becomes hazardously confused with the real one when a team begins the exploration of one of Saturn's moons.

Iceborn:

Pluto was the last place anyone expected to find life. That's why it's the last place they looked.

Startling alternative history has been a popular sub-genre of military history and science fiction for years and has recently reached new heights of popularity with Harry Turtledove's epic alternative histories of WWII and the American Civil War. Gregory Benford, Hugo and Nebula Award winning author, here collects original stories by such luminaries as Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Kim Stanley Robinson and Robert Silverberg in alternative histories from ancient times to the 20th century.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Gregory Benford
• In the House of Sorrows - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Remaking History - (1988) - shortstory by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Counting Potsherds - (1989) - novelette by Harry Turtledove
• Leapfrog - novelette by James P. Hogan
• Everything But Honor - (1989) - novelette by George Alec Effinger
• We Could Do Worse - (1988) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• To the Promised Land - (1989) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• Bible Stories for Adults, No. 31: The Covenant - shortstory by James Morrow
• All Assassins - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Game Night at the Fox and Goose - (1989) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Waiting for the Olympians - (1988) - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• The Return of William Proxmire - shortstory by Larry Niven

What would have happened if history had been different - if the major events that shaped our times had occurred in a different way...or not at all? In this intriguing volume, fifteen of science fiction's most imaginative minds alter the past to create a present of startling posibilities. From a Confederacy that won the Civil War to a Europe converted to Viking paganism, from Albert Einstein as a frustrated violin teacher to a Christian Genghis Khan, these bold excursions in time depict bizarre new worlds - oddly familiar, yet disturbingly different.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Gregory Benford
• A Sleep and a Forgetting - (1989) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• The Old Man and C - (1989) - shortstory by Sheila Finch
• The Last Article - (1988) - novelette by Harry Turtledove
• Mules in Horses' Harness - novelette by Michael Cassutt
• Lenin in Odessa - shortstory by George Zebrowski
• Abe Lincoln in McDonald's - (1989) - shortstory by James Morrow
• Another Goddamned Showboat - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Loose Cannon - novelette by Susan Shwartz
• A Letter from the Pope - novelette by Harry Harrison and Tom Shippey
• Roncesvalles - novelette by Judith Tarr
• His Powder'd Wig, His Crown of Thornes - (1989) - shortstory by Marc Laidlaw
• Departures - (1989) - shortstory by Harry Turtledove
• Instability - (1988) - shortstory by Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Filippo
• No Spot of Ground - (1989) - novella by Walter Jon Williams

What would have happened if history has been different: If the major events that shaped our times had occurred in a different way - or not at all? In this thought-provoking volume, eleven outstanding science fiction writers and one legendary statesman alter the past in order to better see the present. Froma Trojan War in which Helen surrenders, to a Civil War fought with robots, from a World War I in which Teddy Roosevelt tries to capture the glory of San Juan Hill, to a World War II in which the race is not for atomic weapons but for orbital rockets, these bold excursions in time depict bizarre new worlds - oddly familiar, disturbingly different - a rare glimpse of WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Gregory Benford
• And Wild for to Hold - (1991) - novella by Nancy Kress
• Tundra Moss - novelette by F. M. Busby
• When Free Men Shall Stand - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Arms and the Woman - (1991) - shortstory by James Morrow
• Ready for the Fatherland - shortstory by Harry Turtledove
• The Tomb - shortstory by Jack McDevitt
• Turpentine - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Goddard's People - (1991) - novelette by Allen Steele
• Manassas, Again - (1991) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• The Number of the Sand - (1991) - shortstory by George Zebrowski
• If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg - (1930) - essay by Winston S. Churchill
• Over There - (1991) - novelette by Mike Resnick

Fourteen of science fiction's most popular writers--including L. Sprague de Camp, Robert Silverberg, and Kim Stanley Robinson--offer their visions of an America that might have been.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Gregory Benford
• Report of the Special Committee on the Quality of Life - (1980) - shortstory by Harry Turtledove
• Ink from the New Moon - shortstory by A. A. Attanasio
• Vinland the Dream - (1991) - shortstory by Kim Stanley Robinson
• If There Be Cause - (1992) - novelette by Sheila Finch
• Isabella of Castile Answers Her Mail - (1992) - shortstory by James Morrow
• Let Time Shape - (1992) - shortstory by George Zebrowski
• Red Alert - (1991) - shortstory by Jerry Oltion
• Such a Deal - (1992) - shortstory by Esther M. Friesner
• Looking for the Fountain - (1992) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• The Round-Eyed Barbarians - (1992) - shortstory by L. Sprague de Camp
• Destination Indies - shortstory by Brad Linaweaver
• Ship Full of Jews - (1992) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• The Karamazov Caper - novelette by Gordon Eklund
• The Sleeping Serpent - (1992) - novella by Pamela Sargent